When Doves Cry

In honor, I am re-posting a little piece I wrote about him on my blog in August 2011.

I called it: “Darling Nikki:”

I just walked into the living room at midnight, to discover my husband watching Prince’s 1984 film “Purple Rain”… if you are younger than 45 – this may be a quaint story of nostalgia about how Grandma and Grandpa used to “get down,” but if you are older than that, perhaps you will recognize some of my memories.

First of all, I was 19-years-old when this movie came out – and to this day, I love me some Prince. This tiny, elfin, androgynous, almost certainly bi-sexual, black man was making girls scream and pass out like a munchkin-sized black-Elvis back in 1984.

Of course, at the time, I was unaware of how truly short he was.

As a woman who was 5’8” in the 7th grade, I was later heartbroken to learn that my little mini-chocolate-chip of desire was only 5’2” and explicitly didn’t date women taller than he was… like my meeting Prince, much less dating him, was even a remote possibility.

I took posters of him, one of which featured a semi-nude, effeminate African American male lounging on purple satin sheets, and taped them on large pieces of leftover paneling from a basement renovation project. I propped these pieces of homemade art in my bedroom windows, creating a darkened den of Prince-lust.

Sometimes, it is painful to realize that I have lived long enough to find out that the mysterious, elusive, too-cool-for-school Prince, re-named himself some unpronounceable hieroglyphic, and became a Jehovah’s Witness… seriously, people in Minnesota, have opened their doors to find PRINCE on their porch wanting to come inside for a religious chat.

I’ve never opened the door to anyone holding a pamphlet in my life, but I swear, I would let Prince come into my living room and talk about anything he wanted just to hang out with him for an hour.

Do you think he would be embarrassed if I started writhing on the floor doing my impression of him doing “Darling Nikki” on stage almost thirty years ago?